OK, time to do this. I’ll add to it when I can.

First, a couple of pictures.

The choice of breakfast tea at the Sofitel is not what you would call a smorgasbord. However, their Cocos go POP and their Rice is the Crispiest.

The wedding was on the Friday, so we decided to arrive a bit early (the previous Sunday) and make a nice little holiday out of it. At the Sofitel in Seminyak, there were just three of us, with a few others at the Oberoi and 23 others at a villa complex thing.

We had a quiet night on the Sunday, met up with Indo Poo Doris and her friend in Kuta, but left early as we had to be up at 6am to go diving. Kuta was a bit too touristy for our liking, and we didn’t see many ladies around at all. Anyway, the next day, a long trip to the north of the island, seeing as we had to go back as I’d forgotten my dive computer and we also got a flat tire. Long, but lovely. Driving through the island, seeing people washing in streams and all the paddy fields. I loved it. Alas, the photos were not so good. I did sort of get a video of the volcano. [2 MB MPEG] Not sure of the name. It might be Gunung Agung.

The diving was OK, not amazing. Comedy long walks up and down the rocky beach. Not the best on safety either and our dive guide just buggered off taking photos. Was good to meet up with everyone, including one of my first mates from Hong Kong, who moved back to NYC a couple of years ago. Great to see him.

It was a long long day, but we had to go out to find somewhere to watch the West Ham playoff final in a bar called Stadium I think, followed by ‘doing the cocktail list’ in a bar in Seminyak. Tuesday and Wednesday by the pool getting red. Tuesday evening, we met everyone at Ku De Ta. What a place! So chilled out.

Ku De Ta is an assault on the senses, part restaurant, part bar, part lifestyle. As you walk up the smooth granite stairs and enter the dark teak wood bar and restaurant you look out through the open veranda across the mirror like ornamental pond that separates the property from the perfect white sand of Seminyak beach… and you can really begin to understand why Bali is called ‘The Island of the Gods’.

As lunch drifts into dinner and the sun begins to drown over the sea, the candles are lit, the palm trees are illuminated and the Balinese ornamental flags flutter in the dying wind, you find yourself thinking… it doesn’t get better than this… and it really doesn’t.

Again, the photos didn’t come out very well. There are some here, and more text:

If you’re a fashionista, a cosmocrat, a hipster, the place to be and be seen in Bali, is, without discussion, the Ku De Ta. Situated next to the Oberoi Hotel on Seminyak beach, the Ku De Ta is a bar/terrace/restaurant/party venue for the beautiful people. Superb decor, incredible view of the sunsets (sunset is the time to be there), expensive drinks and lounge music (with live DJ’s), the Ku De Ta submits to all the requisite clichés but does so with panache. It is of course on of those places where style beats substance but you cannot fail to get caught up in the ambience.

So, by around 2am of course, they were playing Bohemian Rhapsody with us screaming at the top of our voices.

More later.